


Wanted: Found, not lost

by Somedrunkpirate



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Eames needs to figure something out, Get Together, Introspection, M/M, Pre-Slash, time jumps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-25 10:17:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10762224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Somedrunkpirate/pseuds/Somedrunkpirate
Summary: Eames loses Arthur sometimes. He drops off the face of the planet for weeks at the time, no whisper of a job, no tales of his location. No one knows where he goes, including Eames.





	Wanted: Found, not lost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IAmANonnieMouse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IAmANonnieMouse/gifts).



> A little thing I was not supposed to write because finals.
> 
> For dear Nonnie because she worked damn hard on her papers and is awesome <3

 

Eames loses Arthur sometimes. He drops off the face of the planet for weeks at the time, no whisper of a job, no tales of his location. When Eames asks him about it, Arthur talks around, over, and beside it, as untouchable in conversation as he is in a fist fight. Maybe Arthur goes underground, fights in boxing rings and wins them all, pours that intensity he has into raw combat, a rage he only shows at the rarest of times. When he comes back he always looks refreshed, a brightness that wasn’t there before. It makes Eames boil with something – curiosity, jealousy – that crowds his mind whenever Arthur disappears again. He is doing something, something that seems to make him feel better, that almost resets him, like the flick of a switch. Arthur comes back a new person, and no one knows where he goes, including Eames.

No one even bothers to know about it, to find out something about it. No one even tries. Why would they? Arthur is a mystery wrapped in an enigma that knows how to hack your bank account when you cross a line. And those lines are invisible, unknowable, untouchable, so Eames pretends they don’t exist. He’s sure his entire existence crosses a line for Arthur, but for some reason he still doesn’t have a bullet in his head or a knife in his abdomen and Eames knows those are Arthur's favorite ways to kill. Eames has seen him do it enough to be able to tell, and he knows what they mean.

Headshots are business, efficient and effective. Knife wounds are personal, survivable, but deadly to a fault and painful to the extreme. It’s simultaneously a warning, a last chance, and a punishment. Someone doesn’t need to be dead to be a cleaned up loose end. Eames hopes he will never be on the wrong side of Arthur’s knife; on the wrong side of Arthur, period.

Sometimes, those lost times feel like that. Like being in the wrong place, not quite walking the right path, like there is somewhere else he is supposed to be. Sometimes he wonders if Arthur would like Eames to find him, if he is counting on it. If all those times that Arthur showed up out of the blue – for a job, a hide out, a deal – were hints, questions, pleas to do do the same to him. What would he find, if he started looking, really digging? Not asking around like he’s been doing for years, not tracing like he’s been doing forever. But really, _really_ looking. Eames knows that he could find Arthur if he wanted to. He doesn’t know if he wants to; doesn’t know what he will find. Eames doesn’t like surprises, not with things like these.

 

Sometimes Eames wonders if Arthur has a family, if that is what the lost time is for. If there is a ring hidden somewhere in his luggage, if there are children's drawings in his moleskin, pictures on his hard drive. Eames blames his experience portraying the impossible for how clear the vision is. Arthur with a small child, no more than three, their tiny hands tight in the fabric of his trousers. Arthur raking his hand through the soft curls, the kid beaming with chubby cheeks and dimples, releasing the fabric to lift their arms _up up up Dada_.

The whole thing started when a child got lost in Stockholm while they were discussing a job. Arthur stood up right away, found the mother within four minutes and held the boy's hand the entire time. Did Arthur have kids at home somewhere? The thought fills him with sorrow and longing and oh god he’s getting old. He’s thinking about kids. If someone shouldn’t have kids, it's Eames. He should never be in charge of a human being. Arthur, though. Arthur is trustworthy, competent, and he is good. In his core, he’s good. It’s a rarity in this business. Arthur could be a dad. Eames calls around one more time, but doesn’t start digging.

 

Arthur doesn’t have a family.

He was drunk, when he said it. But it was honest, Eames knows it was; Arthur can evade and slip away through Eames’ fingers. He doesn’t lie, he only omits. And this time, he didn’t even do that.

“Eames,” he had mumbled, “I have no one. No one has me. So what does it even matter?”

Eames had confronted him on a move he made during a shoot out. He had pushed Eames away, out of the sniper’s aim. The bullet had ripped Arthur’s sleeve apart instead. If the bullet had been a little more to the left, it would have been his shoulder. With the situation they were in – six shooters, pouring rain and humid air, no way to escape but to run and pray – Arthur could have died right then and there. Eames had told him that, although he appreciated not getting shot, he’d rather not be responsible for someone losing their Arthur. He had been drunk too, but he still remembers how Arthur had frowned at him and then shook his head sloppily, before destroying Eames’ most solid theory with a sigh.

Eames had knocked back his drink in response. He doesn’t know what he will find, if he ever decides to search for it, but now he knows something he will _not_ find. Maybe, now, searching will feel less like marching to his own funeral, and more like walking towards something good, something he wants, something he can have.

Arthur has no one, he said so. It’s the only lie he’s ever told Eames, but maybe it doesn’t count if he doesn’t know he’s lying.

 

The next time Arthur drops off the map, Eames is tied up in a shit hole of a job. The architect is a junky and it seems like their extractor doesn’t know how to breathe without at least two cigarettes in her mouth. It’s the kind of job Arthur would judge him for picking, and he’s probably is judging him right now, wherever he is. Maybe that’s why he went away this time; done with Eames’ idiotic decisions.

Eames knew it was going to be hell, but this is a chaos even he can’t find some sense in and it makes him itch for the calm sensibility of suits and black morning coffee. He stays for two days too long, because he’s lost Arthur again and he wanted something to distract him from that. It’s not about the digging anymore. He knows he wants to dig, he knows he wants to search and find and _hope_ , that wherever Arthur has gone, he has a place for him. Now that he knows, it overwhelms him, terrifies him, and when he starts digging, he won’t be able to turn back. The problem is that Eames doesn’t know what he’ll find, if there will be rejection or acceptance – maybe even elation – and Eames doesn’t like surprises, not with Arthur.

 

It takes Eames a while to realise that he doesn’t need to dig. That’s the way Arthur would have done it; he is a pointman, he finds people. He finds Eames time and time again. Eames doesn’t work like that, and never has; people come to him for jobs, and he has phone numbers for people he needs to reach. He doesn’t look for people, but he talks to them, by using the art of the word instead of the technicalities of research. Research is too impersonal, giving only the bare bone facts. He can find the adress, find the location, but still not know what will happen when he shows up. He should talk to Arthur. He should call him.

Calling Arthur feels like the first time he dreamshared. The sharp sting of the IV and then the eternal wait for the drug to kick in. A pounding heart, short breaths and this terrible mix of hope and fear, the knowledge that whatever happens next could be either the best thing that’s ever happened to him or the worst. Dreamshare changed his entire life for the better and he’s never looked back; the world suddenly opened with new possibilities, a passion he can’t ever live without. Eames hopes, _prays_ , the bloody phone call will go the same way.

Eames decides to call when Arthur leaves again. It’s time. Two months later, Arthur is gone.

Eames doesn’t know if Arthur ever gave him a permanent number, so he calls the ones he still has, all six of them. The phone feels like a gun in his sweaty palm, 6 slots, the bullet can be in any one of them, or the gun is empty and it’s all been a bluff. If there are no bullets, Eames will dig; he’s started it, he’s going to finish it.

Arthur picks up on the sixth number, the very first one he gave to Eames. Eames’ heart jolts like he’s been electrocuted and he has to focus to keep his breathing even and calm.

“Who are you and how did you get this number?” Arthur says briskly over the phone.

Right, Eames is using a burner. Arthur doesn’t know it’s him.

He has a script, lines, flowery prose that will convince Arthur once and for all that he deserves to be wherever he is hiding. But the words get stuck in his throat, for a minute there is only breathing.

Arthur doesn’t hang up. Eames doesn’t either.

Arthur clears his throat, after another minute. “Eames?” he says, and it sounds so tentative, so uncertain, that it breaks through the frozen state Eames is in.

“Yes, darling, it’s me,” he says, and he hears Arthur chuckle softly.

“Are you ready to join me?” Arthur says, and Eames closes his eyes.

Of course Arthur had known; Arthur knows everything. And he’s been waiting, he has been _waiting_ for Eames to come.

“Yes,” Eames says, instead of the thousand questions that bubble up from his heart to his brain.

He watches curiously how the hand on his lap clenches and unclenches. He’s coming down from an adrenaline high, and he hasn’t even been shot at.

“Does that mean you’ve found me?” Arthur asks.

“No,” Eames says. “I don’t find people, I wasn’t sure if you wanted to be found. So I’d thought I’d ask.”

“Ah.”

“Darling, where are you?” Eames asks. He knows he is going to get an answer, his heart kicks into a higher gear anyway.

“I’m in Paris,” Arthur says.

“Of course you are in Paris,” Eames sighs. He rakes a hand through his hair.

“Is Paris not to your liking?” Arthur asks, but he’s teasing. Arthur knows when he has won, when something is certain. Eames has always admired that about him.

“No, love. Paris sounds lovely. Any chance I can join?”

Arthur just breathes for a second, into the phone. “You don’t know how long I’ve waited for you to ask me that.”

“I’m sorry,” Eames says.

“No. Don’t be sorry for _that_ , be sorry for the fact that you decided to call me when you’re still in Hong Kong and it will take at least another 16 hours before you’re here and I can finally push you into bed with me. I want an apology for that, you hear me?”

Eames feels himself starting to smile radiantly, his cheeks almost ache from it. “I'm sorry, darling,” he says solemnly, ‘I’ll take the earliest flight available.”

“Your flight leaves in 2 hours, so I would pack if I were you.” Arthur says, nonchalantly.

“You booked me a flight,” Eames says. “Pet, do you know that you are _terrifying_.” That last part was a little too honest, a bit too raw. Eames holds his breath.

“If you think I can’t talk to you and get you a flight at the same time, you think low of me,” Arthur quips and then he sighs. “Eames, you are the scariest thing that has ever happened to me and can you please get over here that we can both shake in terror within proximity of each other?”

Eames nods and then remembers Arthur can’t see him. “Yes.”

“Okay, then hang up and move.”

“Yeah,” Eames says and sits up. Just before pressing the disconnect button he hesitates. “Arthur, I…”

“No. No confessions over the phone. I have to draw a line somewhere,” Arthur interrupts him swiftly.

Eames chuckles. “Okay.”

“Goodbye, Mr Eames, I will see you soon.”

Eames’ goodbye gets cut off by the artificial click of the phone. A second later, Arthur texts him an address, and Eames falls back on the rickety hotelbed for a few breaths.

It took him a long time, way too long, but he’s found Arthur.

Finally.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you Autumn for suffering through my stubborn writerly mess, best beta in the world. 
> 
> Hope you liked it! Pretend it doesn't exist! You didn't read anything because I'm very obediently studying right now and that means I couldn't have written anything at all.
> 
> Edit:   
> [Nonnie made a Arthur pov for this thing I cannot deal with how good it is. ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10831989)


End file.
